Patriots hoping to head into regular season on a positive note

New England’s fourth and final summertime tuneup will come against the New York Giants in the New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Thursday night. The next time they take the field it will be for real on Sept. 12 against Cincinnati.

By Glen Farley

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Glen Farley

Posted Sep. 2, 2010 at 12:01 AM
Updated Sep 2, 2010 at 2:04 AM

By Glen Farley

Posted Sep. 2, 2010 at 12:01 AM
Updated Sep 2, 2010 at 2:04 AM

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When they take the field against New York’s NFC entry at the New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Thursday night (7, TV: Chs. 4, 64; Radio: WBZ-98.5 FM), the New England Patriots will be looking to take a Giant step … backward.

Better they should look like the team that opened the preseason with wins over the Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints (27-24) and the Atlanta Falcons (28-10) than the one that lost to the lowly St. Louis Rams (36-35) last Thursday night.

“We have to play smarter football,” Patriots inside linebacker Jerod Mayo said. “The first two weeks of the preseason, I think we played pretty good defense as far as the ones go. Last week was just a little rock in the road, a little bump in the road, but hopefully, we’ll get back on track.”

A little rock in the road?

Given the facts that, for the most part, it came with the “ones” (starters) on the field and was perpetrated by a team that won one game all of last season, it could be argued that had the rock been any larger, it would have had “1620” inscribed on it.

Granted, on the offensive side of the ball, the Patriots’ effort against the Rams was only half-bad.

After muddling its way through a first half in which their number of punts equaled their first downs (four apiece), the New England offense showed some life in the second half as:

Tom Brady went deep to Randy Moss for a catch-it-in-stride 65-yard scoring strike that would have been highlight film material if not for the fact that it occurred in the third quarter of a game in August;

The unit covered 98 yards on a touchdown drive consisting of 10 straight passes by the quarterback (who completed eight of them) in a possession that carried over from the third quarter into the fourth and;

Playing opportunistic football, the reserves punched one in from the 10 following safety Brandon McGowan’s fourth-quarter interception of a Thaddeus Lewis pass and 38-yard return.

On the defensive side of the ball, though, the team got a full 60 minutes – an entire game of mistakes and missteps that are all the more alarming when one considers that Sept. 12’s regular-season opener with the defending AFC North division champion Cincinnati Bengals at Gillette Stadium is rapidly approaching.

“We just played dumb football,” said Mayo. “(We) had too many penalties (and) couldn’t get off the field on third down. That was the story of the game on the defensive side of the ball.”

The end result was that one-point loss to the woeful Rams that was decided by Josh Brown’s 37-yard field goal on the game’s final play. Closing kick aside, the damage was done long before the ball sailed through the uprights.

Page 2 of 2 - It was done when:

A rookie – granted, Sam Bradford was the top pick in the April draft, but he’d never started an NFL game – was dissecting the New England defense for 15 completions in 22 attempts for 189 yards and two TDs with no interceptions;

Another rookie, fifth-round pick Michael Hoomanawanui, was hauling in passes from Bradford to cap off scoring drives in the first and second quarters;

The Rams controlled the ball for an off-the-charts 43:46 of the game’s 60 minutes.

As a result, a traditionally insignificant preseason finale – last year’s saw the likes of Brady, Randy Moss, Vince Wilfork and Mayo sit and Brian Hoyer, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, Stephen Williams and Herana Daze-Jones (the latter two were released two days later) play starring roles in a win that saw the Patriots erase a 21-0 deficit en route to a 38-27 win – may have suddenly taken on more significance.

Who plays against the Giants tonight? How much do they play?

In the wake of last Thursday night’s Foxboro follies, those questions have been raised heading into tonight’s game with the Giants.

Past practice in preseason finales under head coach Bill Belichick has meant nights off for the starters and significant others on the team’s roster.

This much is known: Leigh Bodden has the night off.

An already uncertain situation in the secondary grew dramatically worse on Tuesday when the starting right cornerback, whose services the Patriots invested $22 million in (over four seasons) during the offseason, was placed on the injured reserve list with a torn rotator cuff.

Regardless of who’s on the field tonight, the Patriots need to see far better results than they saw last Thursday night against the Rams. That performance was a giant step backward, if you will, following their preseason-opening wins over the Saints and Falcons.

“I think everybody needs to stay focused,” defensive end Mike Wright said. “Come out here every day and get better. Keep your head down and keep going, that’s what we need to do.

“The season’s not here yet. We still have one more week to get better against the Giants, and I think we’re all worried about that right now.”